Tales From Café Apollinaire
Variations on Distilled Dreams
Part 3.
International Socialists
On Tuesdays the International Socialists
meet at Café Apollinaire
all the heavy weights and light weights are there
sing a medley of tunes
vote to toss Lenin and Stalin and Mao
out into the streets
let us speak of them no more
dreaming of the Paris Commune
of storming the Bastille-
Eight feet long Baguettes begin to speak
Baguettes with arms legs eyes
order coffee and brandy
the library around the corner
has called the police the book shelves
stuffed with big rude cynical Baguettes
the Deli next door complains
they have no Baguettes just stacks
of half- baked books
all done in the twinkling of an eye-
The band plays songs from
the Tibetan Book of the Dead
the Book of Psalms
the Vedic Liturgy
people rush shoving their way
to the dance floor to do the Can-Can -
Boisterous Walt Whitman celebrates
the Body Electric plays prophet
peddles his book of Blades of Grass
pestering patrons -
Merlin the Poser sets up shop
dressed in a black cape
uses a wooden walking stick
covered with carvings of snakes and runic signs
removes the Death card
and the Hanged Man from the Tarot Deck
to ensure brisk business-
Yeats pulls up a chair begins his commentary
on the ancient mystical Druids
talks of an armed revolution
out of which a terrible beauty is born
introduces himself to an invisible elf
refuses to leave the Café all day
fearing the slouching beast outside
dreams of the Isle of Innisfree
'til someone reminds him
there are no Cafés there -
Virginia Woolfe tells tales
of picnics at the lighthouse
her hearing impaired waves thundering
crashing all about her
she leaves stopping here and there
filling her pockets with stones
preparing for her journey
beneath the rythmic grey atlantic waves-
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